7-Grain Soul

When I was little, my mommy didn't love me. How did I know? My Adam's all-natural, no-sugar-added peanut butter told me so. While other kids were eating gloriously white Wonderbread, Skippy, and Smuckers sandwiches for lunch, followed by fruit snacks, Capri Sun, and Oreo Cookies, I was muscling down my homemade-whole-wheat bread sandwiches with that Adam’s no-sugar peanut butter and homemade jam, followed by an apple, water from the fountain, and – if I was lucky – an orange-rind-pumpkin-whole-wheat dessert thing that my Mom thought she could pass off as a cookie.

My fellow geek-friends soon discovered that they could bribe me to do humiliating things in exchange for a morsel of their marvelously saccharine fruit rollup. Half the time they didn’t want it anyway (I never understood this), and would just have a little fun watching me bark like a dog, or whatever cruel prank they dreamed up this time. Luckily, they were not very creative, and I don’t think the other kids ever noticed my desperate antics. Not that it helped my popularity any.

Nevertheless... childhood scarred me. And as an adult, I defiantly and enthusiastically buy Skippy peanut butter now. It’s one of the beautiful things about adulthood. We responsible people working the daily grind often lament the loss of the old days, when we had no responsibilities and knew nothing of the pain and suffering in the world. In this moment, though, I choose to rejoice in my adulthood! Finally! I can eat what I want! I can go where I want! I can do what I want! Remember how we used to think we couldn’t wait to grow up and not have parents telling us what to do all the time? Remember that cruelty really did exist in the world, among our own name-calling peers? Remember that summers were actually boring as often as they were fun? I do. Childhood was great. But adulthood is also Great. I mean, hey! I get to eat Skippy now.
I just at a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich, and oh, the bliss!

Truthfully, most of my tastes were eventually brow-beaten to match my mother’s in the end. Or else I’ve returned to them after briefly experimenting with the dark side of refined foods and transfats (so unfair, to call foods “refined” which are actually evil, menacing fragments of real food which coat your intestines, stay beyond their welcome, and make you fat). Nowadays I buy the wholest-wheatest bread I can find. I prefer all-natural ingredients. I am actually grossed out by fatty, ready-made, boxed or frozen entrees. I love fresh fruit and vegetables. I’m a huge fan of broccoli. And I make almost everything from scratch if I possibly can. Very like my mother. It’s only on a few points that I’ve diverted, like the peanut butter.

It is our privilege as adults to decide which of our parents’ values to adopt, whether it be religion, child-rearing, marriage, moral values, habits, etc. I would say my food preferences somewhat follow my more important life choices so far. In the areas of morals and values, mostly I’ve come to agree with what my parents taught me. I diverge here and there (but then, as an adult I also know now that they don’t even agree on everything. Go figure). But I generally subscribe to the same whole-grain-whole-life religion they do. In the end I married a man my mother actually approved of. My political and social opinions are, well, sort of the same as my folks’. Overall, I can’t complain. I’m really grateful to my parents for teaching me good values and helping me develop an early taste for goodness, honesty, joy, God, love, gratitude, the outdoors, personal accomplishment, and natural foods.